By the time she and Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi founded BLM after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2013—or at least that’s the story—Cullors had already had more than a decade of this type of revolutionary programming. And that’s Cullors. Garza was not trained by a former terrorist but by someone arguably worse—a scholar of the thought of Antonio Gramsci.

My generation did not go to war. The majority of us live off of our parent's resources and hard work and are very pampered because of it. My generation is caught up in a lot of stuff that does not matter. We cannot barely fathom what it means to be truly sacrificial and to work hard, let alone war. we did have our own pandemic with Covid-19 that can most definitely be compared to the N1H1 virus in 1918. There was a letter I remember form that time of a girl being sick of the quarantine and being determined to rebel and have her Halloween party anyway. In some ways my generation is lost. The politics are horrific, everything is terribly expensive, the job market is horrendous. It seems and most definitely feels impossible to get started in the world and actually do something and go somewhere and be someone. Both today and then there is this overwhelming feeling of being hopelessly stuck.

There is also the obvious implication of Lucky not being Lucky at all. His name could be pure irony--a Lucky slave.

However, the whole meaning of the play is about death and buying time till you get there. We live our lives in distraction until we finally pass. Lucky has something that continuously passes the time. He is continuously busy with something. Estragon and Vladimir cannot say that. They are continuously looking for entertainment, distraction, something to pass the time. They cry out with joy once they find something. In this context, Lucky is indeed Lucky.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape,

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

They sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house." -Philip Larkin, Aubade, 1977, lines 41-50

We cannot escape death. It is our doom our destiny. We just go about life trying to forget about it or trying to pretend that it isn't there. We spend our time doing silly things like going to work, but really does it matter? Everyone is living the same life. Everyone is just going about their days, their life, until they finally die. There really is no difference between a postman and a doctor. They are both just working people. And even in the face of death, life just goes on--it must. After the doctor visits the sick and the dying and the dead, the postman will come around too, both just living because they have to.

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now," -Philip Larkin, Aubade, 1977, lines 4-5

Death is the real reality. Even when the world is dark and unrecognizable, there is still death. It exists in and under everything, not matter how distant we try to make ourselves. This waking life we live is really just a whole diversion and distraction from what really must happen in the future--from really is happening now.

We point to smart phones, air-conditioning, hands-free paper-towel dispensers and other conveniences to confirm that we have it really, really good now – or at least better we used to. The presumption is that these kinds of things, in the final analysis, really matter.

Yet different measures speak otherwise. Addictions are up.¹ Suicides are up.² Anxiety is up.³ Depression is up.⁴ Rates of happiness are down.⁵ Antianxiety and antidepressant medications are up.⁶ Pills that claim to help you do things like sleep⁷ and have sex⁸ and pay attention⁹ are up. Deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide are now at highest level since record-keeping began.¹⁰ There appears to be an epidemic of loneliness,¹¹ a sexual recession,¹² a breakdown of trust.¹³ We could go on." -The Origins of Modern Meaninglessness, Live Real

We arent really living, we are just getting by and obviously it isnt enough. We distract ourselves from dying and so also distract ourselves from living. Obviously it is a horrible existence.

In "Waiting for Godot," Estragon and Vladimir talked about hanging themselves every night. No wonder. This is the life they are living too.

His whole life, he is simultaneously ignoring life and the death inside him. Even on his deathbed he struggles with living and dying, not wanting to hold on to either really and not knowing how to think of them or which one to pick. It is only after Ivan accepts the concept of death as a real part of life that he finally dies.

We like Ivan are full of pain but we ignore it and ignore life at the same time. We distract ourselves from death but since death is a part of life we end up distracting ourselves from life aswell.

This is what was happening in Godot. Estragon and Vladimir are in a constant state of looking for distraction just like us. They avoid both life and death in their meaningless endeavors. The play is only surreal bc thier lives are made surreal by their own choices and necessity.

two suicide notes:

"Imagine a happy group of morons who are engaged in work. They are carrying bricks in an open field. As soon as they have stacked all the bricks at one end of the field, they proceed to transport them to the opposite end. This continues without stop and every day of every year they are busy doing the same thing. One day one of the morons stops long enough to ask himself what he is doing. He wonders what purpose there is in carrying the bricks. And from that instant on he is not quite as content with his occupation as he had been before.
I am the moron who wonders why he is carrying the bricks."

"I’m sorry, Mom.
I’ve written this note several times in my head over the past ten years, and this version finally feels right. I now believe that hope is nothing more than delayed disappointment. I’m tired. I realize that I don’t deserve to think this way because, on paper, I have a great life. I’m fortunate. I eat good food. I travel. I live in a great city. However, all of this seems trivial to me. It’s a first-world problem, I know. But I often feel alone while in a room full of my best friends. I’ve felt absolutely nothing during what should have been the happiest and darkest times in my life. No single conversation or situation has led me to do this."

we are dying bc there is nothing else for us. reality is so bleak. what is there in this modern landscape but the monotonous on-and-on of a futile necessity? Like Larkin says in his Aubade, "Work has to be done" (49).